


Steve² (Two for One)

by navaan



Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Getting Together, Inspired by Fanart, M/M, Magic, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Possessive Steve Rogers, Threesome - M/M/M, two Steves/one Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 23:59:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18883954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: A magical mishap leaves the Avengers with two Captain Americas — and no easy solution to undo it. Tony hopes he can find a way to help.





	Steve² (Two for One)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marumo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marumo/gifts).
  * Inspired by [As You Dreamed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18880582) by [marumo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marumo/pseuds/marumo). 



> This is my fic for the 2019 Cap-IronMan Reverse Big Bang for Team Kree.  
> 
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 
> 
>   
> It was inspired by this wonderful art piece by marumo, who loves Avengers Assemble very much: [ **As You Dreamed** ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18880582) (0 words) by [ **marumo** ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marumo)  
> Check it out and leave her some awesome feedback!
> 
> Thank you so much for playing in the Reverse Bang and giving your hot and inspiring art to us, marumo. ♥ I had a lot of fun with Tony and his two Steve and it was so much fun working with you!! :D
> 
> As the banner hints, there's a second fic, [**No I In Threesome**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18885613) (8950 words) for this amazingly hot art by [**cptxrogers**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptxrogers) that you should also absolutely go read! I will link it here as soon as it's up!

“The alarm shrieked loudly through the lab, and Tony pushed up the protective goggles he’d been wearing while he’ d been working on the new armor protection system. “JARVIS? What’s it now? Atlanteans? Vampires?”

“A skirmish in Harlem. Thor and Hulk are already on the scene.”

“Avengers assembling?”

On the monitor to his left, JARVIS pulled up the broadcast of the fight. Thor was fighting off what looked like a Hulk-sized wolf, while Hulk was trying to fight off what looked like a swarm of rainbow-colored flies. “What’s going on there, guys? Need a hand?”

“No need to send reinforcements,” Thor ground out between his teeth and punched the wolf with his hammer hard enough to send it hurtling through the air. The Hulk _clapped_ once, twice, and the little bugs were pushed back by the blast. “We have this well in hand.”

“Point taken,” Tony said, already turning back to his work and using one hand to turn off the alarm. “Let us know if it gets out of hand. Otherwise, I will stick with enjoying the moment of downtime as long as it lasts.”

There was no further response, just a growl from Hulk that Tony knew wasn’t aimed at him but at whatever he was fighting. With both his hands, he reached deeper into the bowels of the armor and connected the microcircuitry carefully.

He nearly hit his head, startled when someone spoke up from the door. “It’s lasting?”

“What?” Tony pulled himself back out of the armor and saw Steve standing in the door, for once not in his uniform. Until now he hadn’t realized how long it had been since he’d seen Steve out of uniform. Recently, it had been one Avengers Assembly-call after another and the regular training exercises in between. They were all ready for a little break.

“The downtime? It lasts? I heard the alarm.”

“Oh, yeah, some giant puppy problem that Thor is already dealing with. No problems o the world-ending, villain-rules-the-world magnitude problems to solve today.”

“You say that as if you regret not being needed?” Steve looked at him sternly, but over their last few adventures, Tony had relearned to recognize when his friend was teasing. It was annoying how well he could pull it off with that serious super soldier-at-war look. Just enough to make Tony want to tease him back.

“Ha,” Tony said, “with how much we _were needed_ over the last few months I’m just surprised we ever broke up the team in the first place. Were we nuts? Did we annoy each other that much?”

Finally, a small wistful grin broke the seriousness of Steve’s facade. “We had our reasons back then.”

Tony was grateful he hadn’t said differences. After all, the Avengers had gone their separate ways back then because it looked like they had lost any common ground.

“Maybe the reasons were never good ones. What counts is that we’re back together now because we are needed, and…” Steve stopped. It looked like Captain America himself was biting his lip. “I mean, because we do make a good team.”

Seeing Steve of all people flustered was a rare occurrence. He was too good at hiding behind the serious face he often wore, behind the poster boy image of the larger than life hero that Tony had always loved — with undisclosed passion. But he wasn’t going to go there. Rejection he could take — but not from Steve.

“I’m glad we’re a team again,” Steve said softly.

“I’m glad too. I missed having all of you around. Even Hulk. He’s something.”

Steve’s expression went from flustered to serious in the blink of an eye. “I meant _we_ make a good team. _You and me_.”

Tony blinked and let that sink in, for the first time pulling his arms out of the armor to stop working. He hadn’t realized they were due for a you-and-me-talk, but if Steve wanted to tell him about how well they were working together, then Tony would sit back and take any compliment he had to offer. After all, he and Steve often disagreed on how to go about things — even though Tony liked Steve more than he liked anyone else.

“The Avengers are a good team, and we’re working on being better. However, you and me recently, we’re working well together as I think we always did when we agreed,” Steve said, and although his shoulders didn’t sag, he looked like someone who was keeping a heartfelt sigh one contained. “I’m sorry, I’m not here to talk about the Avengers. I’m here to talk about…” He paused, studied Tony, who was crediting himself with keeping his mouth shut to let the man talk here, and then Steve started over as abruptly as the whole conversation had started: “I know you’re always busy with something, but if you have some time this afternoon I thought we could spend time together.”

“Spend time?” Tony looked into the bowels of the armor and then grinned at Steve: “Yes, why not? What did you have in mind? Training exercise? Avenjet field test?”

“Late lunch? Dinner? Just spending time together? I’ll take you wherever you want. We'll have time to talk.” Steve’s eyes were still carrying the earnest expression that he associated with Cap, but Tony realized that this wasn’t just the usual question to spend time with a fellow Avenger.

Steve wanted to talk to him.

In private.

A tiny voice inside him shrieked: WHAT? But the handsome businessman and leader of the Avengers had spent most of his life hiding his insecurities behind cockiness and calmly said: “Yes, that sounds amazing. Let’s make use of the downtime while it —”  
So of course — because it was just his luck — Tony’s words were interrupted by another alarm.

Hawkeye's voice sounded from the Avengers’ communications line, and his face appeared on one of the monitors behind Tony: “Guys, not to get into the long and shiny hairs of our very own god of thunder. But I am afraid I have to disagree with his assessment of thi situation. Which is to say, _HELP_? Please? Now?”

Behind Hawkeye Thor was now toppled over by two of the giant wolf things, a _tree_ was holding Black Widow in a headlock with suddenly agile branches and many of the rainbow-colored bugs were swishing around like crazy little disco lights. Far, far in the background, something exploded.

Tony leaned his face into one hand, massaging the back of his nose, hoping to stop the headache before it could fully form. Had he just been about to spend time with Steve, because Steve wanted to? How had he ever believed his luck would hold for that to actually happen?

“So much for downtime,” Steve remarked, and it was a small comfort, that he sounded as mournful about it as Tony.

“We copy. Avengers Assemble,” Tony spoke into his ID card and nodded at Steve. “Let’s make this quick, Cap, and we’ll still have time to meet up later.” He had nearly said: “We’ll still have time for that date.”

But that was presumptuous. He didn’t want to make Steve think he was teasing or making fun of him. Not when Steve had indicated for the first time since the Avengers' reformation that he wanted to be around Tony as more than another team member — but as a friend. It meant the world. Tony had resigned himself to be the leader of this team, but also the one who had to prove he could be better than he’d been last time when he’d driven all of them away with his arrogance. That Steve wanted to be his friend meant everything.

“It’s a date,” Steve said determinedly and walked out of the lab in such a brisk pace that Tony had no time at all to stare at him open-mouthed.

A date?

When Steve was out of sight — on his way to get into costume and pick up his shield — Tony shook his head and chuckled. Probably just what you said when you were a 90-year-old soldier.

Perhaps he would tease Steve about that at a later time, just the way old friends did.

* * *

They met on the roof like true heroes, and Tony caught Steve’s outstretched arm before Steve reached the edge at a run to fly him the distance they had to go. Falcon, who had been at the Tower too, was hot at their heels.

“What’s going on?”

“Some Asgardian wolf problem,” Tony muttered into the comms.

“Fairies,” Thor spat as if he was talking about the worst kind of infestation possible.

“Fairies?” Sam wanted to know, as he caught up with Tony. “Doesn’t sound like the worst kind of foe we’ve ever faced.”

“We faced elves, and they were bad,” Tony reminded him. He had the sneaking suspicion that he wouldn’t like where this was going. “Sounds like a magic thing.”

“Extra-dimensional magic,” Thor spat again, as if that was in some way or form worse than whatever to an Asgardian was “normal” magic.

They arrived at the scene. In the middle of Harlem a meadow had grown, a few trees had sprung up, swallowing up streets and cars where they were parking. Tony could barely see what kind of buildings were lining the road, because the walls were already overgrown with shrubbery and green, becoming part of the landscape.

“Peaceful,” Sam muttered and landed right by Thor who was swinging his hammer back and forth at the little rainbow-colored lights.

Steve tugged on Iron Man’s arm, and Tony let him go from a quite a way up. He landed on his feet, holding up his shield in case of attack, in best Captain America fashion.

Not one to be left behind when it was about making an entrance, Iron Man swooped over Cap's head and got off a few repulsor blasts at all the moving, attacking trees in range. It had a momentary effect, making the plants screech and moan. Hawkeye fell from one of the branches, coughing and gasping for air. “Thanks,” he said. “I watched too many post-apocalyptic flicks to enjoy the theme of nature striking back at us.”

Tony ignored it. Trying to get a better picture of what was going on, he swooped up in a steep curve and hovered over the scene. Captain America had already been pulled into the fight and was battling hedges and a giant eagle. There was no sign of Black Widow, and Falcon was hovering over Hulk who was stuck in a swamp that Tony knew a minute ago hadn’t been there.

Cursing the way only an Asgardian could, Thor appeared beside him, his hair now a bright blue color.

“Nice new look,” Tony said and hid his smirk inside the armor’s HUD.

“Do not vex me so, Iron Man. These foul creatures must be purged.”

“The bugs? Or the moving trees?”

The pace at which the grass and plants were spreading in all directions was worrying. People were running and the first building looked as if it was about to topple.

“These are not bugs but fairies. Creatures of wild magic.”

“You said extra-dimensional.”

“Yes,” Thor said gravely. And Tony found they were suddenly surrounded by many twinkling rainbow lights.

Tinkling laughter filled his ears.

“This is too Peter Pan for me,” Tony declared when he zoomed in on them and saw the little lights were, in fact, tiny glowing people with wings made from magical-dust or projected light. JARVIS was scanning as the usual pace, but couldn’t settle on a final conclusion, the data shifting like the facts kept changing around the creatures.

One of the lights flew up in front of him, and there was the tingling laugh again. The next moment Iron Man and Thor were both in free fall, hitting the street with a loud crash.

“I hate magic,” Tony swore when Thor landed across from him.

“We know,” Steve said from wherever he was on this crazy town battlefield. “And under the circumstances, we share the sentiment. Team, get us a solution.”

“The man wants a plan.” Natasha appeared above Tony and helped him to his feet as if he needed it. “Get us a plan, Tony. Science against magic! That's your thing.”

“Thor?” Tony asked. “How did this start? Is there anything I need to know that I don’t know already? Anything that could help?”

“Doom started it,” Natasha said. “He opened a rift, and all these rainbow flies came through.”

“Rainbow flies,” Tony repeated and eyed the tiny pixie lights with apprehension. His readings were not giving any conclusive answer on why the cheery bell-like laughter of one of the fairies had sent him down like a magnetic pulse. “Doom? I already know I hate everything about him. What did he do?”

“He tried to steal an artifact of Asgard that had no place in a SHIELD facility,” Thor spluttered and got back to his feet. However, he was swinging his hammer and jumped back in the fight before Tony had received anything that was an actual explanation.

“Widow?”

“Short version: Thor’s not happy with SHIELD. SHIELD isn’t happy with Doom. Doom is not happy with Thor because he stopped him from stealing the thing. He opened a rift, and all of these things came through. Then he vanished and left us to deal with the clean-up.”

Focusing on the part of the story that was the immediate problem, he asked: “A rift?”

Natasha pointed across the street, and at first, Tony saw nothing. Well, he saw many things that were out of the ordinary, but nothing that resembled a rift. There were too many trees and plants blocking the view. Then JARVIS locked onto a shadow between the shrubbery and announced: “Sir, we have a lock. An interdimensional rift.”

“It looks like a rabbit hole.”

“It does,” JARVIS agreed facetiously. "Surely, you do not plan to fall into it?" Sometimes Tony wondered if he’d given the AI a little too much understanding of how humor worked.

“All right, let’s take a closer look. Someone have my back!” Tony launched back into the air and angled in an arching swoop around the fairies, trying to stay out of their way. The readings he was getting from scanning the opening were much better than what trying to examine the lifeforms around himself had given him. This was something he could work with. There was science there.

“I think I can read the energy. Hold the little guys off my back and I’ll try to close it.”

Quickly he let JARVIS calculate the best frequency for the repulsor and dropped down as close as he dared. He had barely gotten close enough to get in position when a tree grew out of thin air right in front of him, blocking the view. It looked like an ordinary tree, not moving, not hitting — then it came to life with a roar. “Damn,” Tony cursed, a second before a shield came down in front of his mask and took the hit instead.

“I got this, Tony. Close the rift.” Not giving an inch to the villainous flora, Cap nonetheless took the time to grin at Tony and give him a thumbs up.

“Yes, sir,” Tony shot back and used his thrusters to push himself up and over Cap, his shield, the tree, diving back down as soon as he had a lock on the rift again.

“JARVIS?”

“The rift has moved, sir.”

“I can see that! Has it stopped moving?” The rabbit hole sized entrance had moved about 25 inches to _hide_ in a sea of yellow flowers. Tony knew only one thing about magical herbs: _these_ couldn't be good.

He dropped down hard and wasn’t even surprised when the flowers turned their bright yellow heads towards him and hissed. The first ones were spraying a green fluid in his direction, and he didn’t need to see the readings to know it was corrosive. Only a few drops struck his gauntlet and the metal started to smolder.  
“This is not good,” he said, mostly to himself, but confirmation already sprang up in the inside of his HUD.

Attracted by what he’d been trying to do, the first little chattering, chuckling fairies were arriving too. There were at least seventeen small lights gathering around, and JARVIS warned: “More fairies are closing in.”

However, what Tony saw now, was even worse — although he had no idea _how_. A huge amebic bubble of violet and blue squeezed out of the rabbit hole rift. The sight alone made Tony’s head spin because an enormous form like the squishy, fleshy ball shouldn’t have fit inside a hole of that size. There was no way to make this work in his head until several descriptive algorithms reminded him there was science under the magic.

“Different dimension, different rules,” he muttered and aimed again.

Before he could get a repulsor blast off, the bubble made a sound like breathing in, and all fairies around it were gobbled up just like that. The sight was even more surreal than what he had seen only a second before. He froze, staring — and all fairies fell back out of the sphere. The enhanced view the armor was providing showed him their beaming, happy faces.

The reading changed in front of his eyes.

Their number had doubled.

Tony stared, let JARVIS confirm the count.

More fairies arrived from all over the battleground, too.

Tony tried to get off a shot, but all fairies turned to him as if they were one organism. There were fairies on his arm, pulling at the armor, grabbing his fingers, latching on to Iron Man’s eye sockets, screeching with delight. His repulsors fired but did not hit his target. The kickback made him stumble and fall back.

“Come on,” he cursed.

“Iron Man!” Behind him, Captain America was calling his name.

“I hate magic!” he growled, both to get it off his chest and let Steve know he was okay.

But the blobby violet-blue thing breathed in again — taking in even more fairies this time. To Tony, at this moment, the scariest discovery was that whatever this was, it had no mouth, no opening; there was no visible _hole_ in its surface. The fairies vanished into it as if they’d been absorbed.

“What is it, JARVIS? It can’t be a magical door?”

“It’s an organism I can’t classify,” the AI informed him. JARVIS was still running through all available databases.

“Organism,” Tony whispered in disbelief. The next moment the double number of fairies flooded out of the bubble — and again their number had doubled. Their smiling faces were terrifying in the unaffected happiness. “I’m beginning to see why Thor hates these bugs.”

He pulled himself up, maneuvered out of the way. The fairies followed him like one entity, moving like a swarm intelligent and fast, grabbing for him, closing in around him, grabbing for him like a giant hand. The laughter multiplied, melodic tinkling amplified to a cacophony that resembled a million shards of glass crashing in a wave over Tony. It hurt his ears, petrified him.

“Iron Man! Focus!”

It was Cap, of course, still by his side to make sure Iron Man could get through and try his solution. The shield pushed into his field of vision. “Do it, Tony! I’ll cover you.”

Suddenly it was easy to shake himself out of the freeze. Steve's voice grounded him. He aimed, got off another repulsor blast.

“The rift is closing at a rate of 14,6783% a second,” JARVIS informed him.

Shouldn’t take long then. Tony had to stop and duck when the swarm tried to grab for him again. To his right, the bubble breathed in and spat out more and more fairies. But something was changing in his readings.

“It’s not closing… It’s reversing. The rift is reversing.”

The first fairies were sucked into it, and instead of bell-like laughter, for the first time, Tony heard a banshee cry.

“Match the new frequency, JARVIS, old buddy. We can get rid of these all in one go if we do this right.” The rift was pulling in fairies, magic flowers, pulling closer the trees — just a bit more and they’d be gone.

“Watch out, Tony!”

The bubble jumped forward, coming right for Tony. Even his thrusters had no time to get him out of the way. He had to dive down, but the fleshy thing came after him still. He braced himself for the impact that never happened.

All he was seeing was blue.

The back of Cap’s uniform filled his vision.

“Get them all,” Steve growled.

So Tony aimed again, making sure he would get the hole to take all of this magical landscape with it, restoring their own world as it had been before this otherworldly tech or magic had infected it. With the shield, Steve pushed back the threatening bubble, that by now was bigger than the Hulk.

Tony could barely see because fairies were clutching on to him now like a second coating to the armor — trying to hold on before they could be sucked into their home dimension or to hinder him. He could barely see anything but rainbow color; his ears filled with their bloodcurdling screams. Only with the help of JARVIS and the armor did he keep up his assault.

When the bubble breathed in this time, Tony swabbed away the fairies from his visor like dirt from a windscreen to see where it was. And while the world around him had started to stretch and pull along vanishing lines created by the rift, making it hard to look, Steve was a solid form in front of his eyes and remained like that for another millisecond — then he got pulled into the bubble.

Over the screeching and screaming and tinkling laughter turned hysteria, Tony could barely hear his own desperate shout. “No!” he howled.

He aimed a repulsor at the thing.

“Close the rift!” someone — Natasha? — shouted at him through the comms.

Even as the monstrous bubble was finally pulled towards the rabbit hole, New York was returning to its asphalt glory. Tony could see it all now. He got off a blast before it could be swallowed — the bubble burst. Only a flash of blue with red and white confirmed that Steve was there, Tony did what he needed to do and changed the frequency one final time to phase the rift out of existence and seal it shut.

When it closed — all signs of magic gone with it — his ear still rang and he was covered in sweat. He felt like he had gone toe to toe with the Adaptoid again and had come too close to losing.

Steve!

Where was Steve?

Immediately he turned to leap over to where Steve had fallen.

“Cap! Are you all right?”

“I am.”

“Yes.”

Two voices answered at the same time.

Same voice.

Same cadence.

Tony stopped, bewildered at the sight that presented itself.

There, kneeling in a puddle of watery goo and fading violet-blue light were two Captain Americas — same uniform, same shield, same patriotic chin, same soulful blue eyes. They seemed to notice each other only when they spoke, their eyes jumping to their counterpart’s.

“What is this?” they growled at the same time.

Tony just stood frozen in his tracks, at a loss what to say or do. Two Steves?

Thor appeared, then Widow and Sam and Hulk and Hawkeye.

“Two Caps? Does that mean I no longer have to do the dishes?” Hawkeye asked with his usual brand of irreverent humor.

Natasha focused on what was more crucial: “Which one is the real one?”

“I am!” both Captains shouted at the same time, faces the wearing the same angry expressions.

An armored hand came up so he could hide his metal faceplate — as if anyone had an idea what was going on beneath.

“Tony?” Natasha prodded him. “Which one is Captain America?”

“Iron Man!” one Cap called out. “Tell them it’s me!”

The other bit his lip, his shoulders tensing.

Tony could feel a headache coming on. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I can’t tell. They both look the same to me.”

“What do we do then?” asked the tense Captain. “You have to get rid of the impostor before he brings back the magic or worse.”

“Is that what you are?” the Captain beside him snapped. "An impostor?"

It was all perfectly Steve — Steve when he was exhausted and angry, when he’d had enough of the nonsense going on around him, when strategic calm gave way to snapping and stubbornness.

“We’ll find out,” Tony promised, not sure which Steve to reassure. Perhaps the person who needed reassuring was, in fact, Tony. “We’ll get you both home and find out.”

There wasn’t anything else they could do. They needed to figure this out before a Cap could stab the other in the back.

Tony wouldn't allow it under any circumstances.

Steve was going to be safe — whichever one turned out to be the real one.

* * *

The two Steves sat on opposite sides of Tony's workshop. Tony had felt the need to put them as far apart from each other as possible while he ran his tests because they were staring each other constantly, not giving the other a chance for betrayal or making a move. With the way they were staring each other, Tony was surprised the impostor hadn't just caught on fire yet.

“Tony?” The Steve on the right side of the room asked with forced calm, betraying his discomfort only in the way his eyes kept drifting to other-Steve. “How long until we know for sure?”

“Getting nervous?” The Steve to Tony's left said, unfriendly, unforgiving, arms folded across his chest — the picture of a man who knew he was in the right.

It was all very Steve.

“Yeah, Tony,” Sam added. “How long? This is making me dizzy.”

“I'm a genius, not a sorcerer,” he snapped. “I'm beginning to think maybe we need one, though.”

It hurt to admit it.

But he had run the checks for the third time and the only thing he could see was that there was _nothing_ that would help them.

“Genetically the two are indistinguishable,” JARVIS announced and the data confirmed it _again_

An uneasy silence settled over the lab, while Tony decided to give it one more shot, typing away at a different algorithm, setting up a new round of scans to feed it with the right data. “That's impossible. They can't both be Steve. What did that fairy sphere do?”

The Steves were still staring at each other with apprehension.

Retracing the steps and calling up all data from their fight, Tony worried his lower lip. “Give me all the readings you have on that magical sphere.”

Numbers and graphs sprang up and Tony quickly examined them all. Too much of it was _impossible_ , leading him to think that perhaps he did need to call someone in who knew more about this — Stephen Strange or an Asgardian with a deeper understanding of faywild magic.

Sam looked at the footage of their fight on another projection. “Could there be some kind of magical cloning involved?”

“There's no genetic drift at all,” Tony pointed out, showing Sam the scans he'd taken.

“Identical copies?”

Both Steves turned to Tony with tormented expressions.

Which one should he comfort if both of them were Steve? Which one could he trust if one of them wasn’t? Tony couldn't say and he hated the uncertainty. What in the world could he believe in if it wasn't in Steve?

“Inconclusive,” JARVIS informed them. There was no telling if there was cloning involved or not. The crux of the matter was: They couldn't tell which Steve was the original Steve — but both of them were Steve.

“What did you have for breakfast?” Tony asked, deliberately keeping his back turned not to indicate which Steve was being addressed.

“Blueberry pancakes,” both answered at the same time.

JARVIS confirmed this immediately with a curt: “Correct.”

They weren't getting anywhere with any of this.

“What color shirt did you wear yesterday?” Sam tried.

“Blue,” both Steve's answered at the same time.

Shrugging, Tony tried: “What's the name of your mother?”

“Sara,” both again answered with one voice.

If Tony was beginning to feel dread crawl up his spine, making it harder and harder to think this through, then what must Steve be feeling? This wasn't getting them anywhere at all.

He scanned the uniform, the fabric they were wearing. In the end, he studied the shield; one of a kind had suddenly become two, and there was no difference. The two vibranium spheres were identical down to the little microscopic imperfections, the tiny hairline cracks that had formed in different places over the years when Cap had used the shield to stop unstoppable forces. Both shields then must have been used to stop the same powers.

“Is there a time shift involved?” one Steve suggested more than asked, perhaps hoping that they had both been grabbed out of the timeline — an explanation that could mean there was an easy solution.

“No temporal anomaly detected,” JARVIS told him.

Already, Tony was going through the corresponding data. “You're the same genetic age; there's no trace of radiation that would suggest time travel or a universe shift. As far as I can tell, you're both Captain America, and you're both from this universe — and from right here and now.”

The Caps looked at him — two sets of identical gazes turned on him with the same amount of unease — and then both started: “What does...?”

They stopped, glaring across the room at their mirror images.

“What does that mean?” Tony finished the question for them. “Damn if I know, Cap, Captains. Steves.” He hid his face in one hand to keep himself from babbling.

“How do we reverse it?” The Steve on the right side of the room asked. His mask of calm had hardened. Tony knew the look: the man was getting ready for a fight.

“And how fast _can_ we reverse it?” the other Steve wanted to know.

A pulsing pain had started up behind Tony's left eye and was beginning to nest there. The migraine had been floating in with the stress of adrenaline and worry, but he had been able to keep it at bay as long as he’d been sure there would be a solution that could be found. Now the pulsing pain was spreading behind his eyes, making concentrating just that tiny bit harder that he didn't need right now. He needed to focus, get his wits about himself and solve this!

“Let me try one more thing,” he told both Steves. This time he looked from one to the other and back to make sure both knew they were included in this request.

They nodded, fast, determined, showing their trust in Tony — both did so at the same time, with the same kind of fervor.

“Brain pattern scan now,” Tony told JARVIS, “and compare it to the last one we have on file.”

“We have things like that one file?” Hawkeye had entered the room and was watching the proceedings with a raised eyebrow. He was leaning with his back against the wall close to the entrance as if he wasn't sure how to approach either Cap. Tony couldn't exactly blame him right now. Being a SHIELD agent must give you enough reasons to watch your back around people you knew. But what when one of the few people you respected and trusted suddenly got split in two and you couldn't tell who was real and who wasn't — that put a whole new spin on trust issues.

“We have them on file in case of Red Skull induced body swaps or shapeshifting impostors. Or, you know, unexpected situations like this.” He waved his hand to both Steves. In light of the situation, Tony was proud that he could keep his voice calm. He also tried to keep an eye on both Steves, hoping for any sort of reaction to his announcement of brain pattern scans. But both men were still caught up in their staring match. Their body language, their responses — they were all Steve’s. And by now, from the corner of his eyes rewatching the footage of the fairies being sucked in and spat out, their numbers doubling every time, Tony with no little amount of trepidation was beginning to think whatever had happened here would have no easy solution.

What if they were both Steve?

“So much for late lunch or dinner,” Tony muttered, as JARVIS pulled up the brain patterns to overlay them with each other and then with the one they'd had on file. All three matched perfectly. There wasn't enough deviation to hint at different experiences, different developments in any part of these men's lives.

Which made a terrible amount of sense — if they'd both shared a life until today. They'd entered the magic bubble one man and had come split out the other end.

Twinned.

“Were you looking forward to that?” one of the Steves asked.

Startled Tony looked up, found both Steves watching him, looks guarded and yet interested.

“I always look forward to spending time with you,” he answered truthfully.

“No big secret there, Cap,” Hawkeye threw in. “You're his favorite.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed with a grin. “We all know that.”

He wanted the floor to swallow him up whole, feeling caught. Did everyone know? Was he that obvious? What would Steve think?

Both Steves looked startled. The surprise was so perfectly mirrored on their identical faces that even looking made Tony’s head spin.

The eeriest thing, though, was to see both Steves break out into a sudden smile — warm and soft and the kind of happy that had only become more common recently — and see it instantly change into a worried frown.

“I wanted to take you out — ” one Steve started.

“— to a diner I discovered recently.”

The room was deathly quiet while the two Steves were looking at each other with renewed surprise.

Oh boy.

“We have two Captain Americas,” Tony whispered and hadn’t yet figured out at all how that was a thing now or what it meant.

“For real?” Sam stared at him wide-eyed.

“That’s going to be amazing in the field! Can you imagine what all the bad guys will think when this hits them for the first time? Some might give up crime just to avoid a two Cap commando!” Clint suggested with his usual lack of tact. “We do have to find a way to tell them apart though before this gets confusing. Red Cap, blue Cap?”

“It’s already confusing,” one of the Steves said, and he sounded a far cry from amused _or_ excited.

Tony pressed his face into one hand and sat there, giving himself a moment to let the information sink in. Had he overlooked something? Anything? This was either the greatest thing that had happened to the world or the worst thing that had happened to any of them ever before. And with what all of them had been through in their crazy hero lives that was _something_. What would it feel like to suddenly be faced with yourself — realizing your individuality, your uniqueness was in question?

To Tony it would be devastating, he thought. Perhaps he and a twin like that would work well on a shared science project — but in the end?

Someone who would know him inside out? Who was driven by the same goals? Had the same means to reach them? Someone who knew his weaknesses and insecurities and shared them?

It would scare the hell out of him. He’d hate it.

Feel threatened by it.

But here they were, with two Steves and both of them seemed to be the real deal. What was Steve feeling? What were both of them feeling? Discomfort? Fear?

“Can you leave us?” Tony asked Sam and Clint. “Help Natasha pick up the slack?”

Clint and Sam looked between them.

“Leave you?” Clint wiggled his eyebrows and Tony facepalmed, trepidation turning into anger in a flare. “You and the _two_ Steves. I feel you need a chaperone.”

“Yes, me and the two Steves. Now go before I put on armor and wipe the floor with you.”

“Tony,” both Steves cautioned him in the same soft voice and then looked away as if struck.

Sam, the youngest member of this team but despite of it the most sensible one after Natasha, took the cue to give everyone an apologetic smile and drag Hawkeye from the room. They could still hear the man protesting before the door closed.

Then Tony was alone with Steve.

Two Steves.

“I'm sorry, Steve. It's my fault. This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't had to save me,” Tony addressed them as one. He was thinking of them as one, but if this lasted they might have to come up with better ways to handle this.

“It's not your fault,” one Steve said and the other nodded, expression tight. "You'd have done the same for me."

“I will call in Stephen and… Wakanda. Asgard? Hulk‘s alien friend, maybe? That smart alien? I will figure this out. I promise.”

“Tony,” one of the Steves said and got to his feet, “I know.”

“We know,” the other Steve corrected. He still looked like he was ready for a fight, but sounded as if he was willing to put his trust in Tony. “It might take a while.”

 _Yes_ , Tony thought, _it might — if there is a solution. What if there isn’t?_

There had to be. Magic wasn’t permanent. And science could be improved upon. He had to believe that if the impossible had been done, then he would be able to find an unlikely solution.

The Steves were looking at each other again. An uneasy truce had been called suddenly. They both got up and walked over to where Tony was looking at the data one more time.

“The problem I see,” one Steve said, “is that we both seem to think we’re the original.”

“The science says we both are.”

Tony drew a deep breath. “It does. And it still is bizarre to watch the two of you. Steve, you’re both Steve. There can’t be too much of a good thing, of course.” He bit his lip. This wasn’t the time for babbling.

The Steve’s looked at him, smiled affectionately. “I’m a good thing?”

On Tony’s other side, the other Steve says: “One of us is.”

“Right now,” Tony said, sure that they would have to work on this truce lasting if they wanted to get through to the solution, “both of you are.”

“Who gets our room?” one Steve asked.

“Both of us,” the other answered. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

“Likewise,” the other shot back tensely.

“Then at least that’s settled,” Tony added with a crooked smile. “Do you both want to have dinner with me then? If we get lucky, then Doctor Strange will have gotten back to us by then.”

Neither Steve looked happy about the idea suddenly, but they both gave Tony a silent nod.

Both Steves left to settle in, walking out briskly, promising to be back for dinner later.

Tony could only hope that as magically as this twinning had happened, it would simply disappear again.

Swiveling back around to his monitors, Tony put his hands back to the keyboard and quickly created a new folder. “Magical twinning effect,” he named it, then added: “— Reversible?”

He sank back in his chair and stared at it.

“I hate mystical problems,” he swore. "Magic really is a curse."

* * *

No easy solution presented itself. Thor returned without news from Asgard. “No being that was not of wild magic entered a duplication speller before,” he declared with a very Asgardian huff of annoyance.

Both Steves had taken up reading their papers at opposite ends of the common room. For the past minutes, they had both done a good impression of it anyway, but Tony was aware that both forgot their reading to follow Tony’s every movement when they thought he wouldn’t notice.

Tony felt giddy, nervous, like it should be uncomfortable to be watched but was instead made his pulse race with exhilaration.

“Duplication speller,” Tony repeated. “There was no word for it before this, was there? You made this up just now?”

Thor shrugged his shoulder sheepishly. “This has never happened before.”

“How lucky,” one Steve said and looked at his counterpart. “First to wake after being frozen for decades and now…”

“Hmmmm.” Tony thought that over. “Super-soldier serum? Could that be why this worked on you?”

“Perhaps nobody ever fell in before me,” the other Steve said.

“ _Or_ ,” Tony said waving his finger in front of the Steve’s nose, “before you no non-fairy ever came out of it on the other side.”

It was clear to him that whatever had duplicated Steve must have been a strain on his body, on the cells involved. They were lucky Steve was alive at all. Two Steves were much better than no Steve at all in his estimation.

“Would that help us reverse this?”

In truth, Tony still had no idea. He shrugged his shoulder. “I’ll look into it.”

Perhaps he was grasping at straws because the two Steves were getting restless and unhappy — and that was generally an unfavorable look on Steve. Tony wanted it gone. He wanted the confident super soldier who called him out when he was going too far, who laughed with him when things went right and who was too noble for his own good. _That_ had gotten them into this mess.

Steve had tried to protect Tony.

“I’ll see where this leads me,” he said to the two Steves and nodded, before bounding towards the elevator. The doors slid open, let him in. Through the closing doors, he heard Hawkeye say: “Now that he’s gone, both of you can stop watching each other like hawks, Steves. Nobody's getting n advantage in the Tony department.”

Tony didn't catch any reply the comment might have gotten from Steve, but he thought it over until he reached the workshop.

* * *

Six days later they still hadn’t made any kind of progress and the Steves — unable to decide on who owned what in their quarters were uneasily sharing a room, but had started to keep apart when they could. Tony didn’t notice at first, because for some unfathomable reason _he_ never caught the Steves alone.

Never tiring of giving him updates on all things Steve, Hawkeye, Natasha and Sam left no doubt to what was going on.

Steve was taking this hard.

That was the root of the problem and also the best explanation for why he — both of him — were avoiding Tony. Nothing Tony had looked into, nothing he had tried had helped or even gotten them closer to a solution.

Tony, quite simply, had let Steve down.

That had led to the Avengers breaking up once already, and Tony didn’t want that to happen again. But how was he going to solve this?

“Any word from any mystics of great power and importance?”

“Doctor Strange has not returned our call, sir.”

“Thanks, JARVIS. Has anyone else?”

“Not anyone with knowledge of fairies.”

Tony let his head fall back against the chair’s backrest and groaned. Thor had suggested taking the Steves on a trip to Asgard and the Nine Realms. Some witch or god or sorcerer out there must know something that was of use.

“We should tell them to go vacationing in Asgard,” Tony muttered. “I’m of no help whatsoever.”

Saying it out loud, even here where no one but JARVIS could hear him, _stung_. When the Avengers had reformed, he had sworn to do his best to be better and not let anyone down.

But not two hours later, Steve — one of them who had taken out the bike for a drive — called in the Avengers. The Red Skull had gathered Hydra to steal a new SHIELD prototype, and he had been on the scene.

A nagging voice in Tony’s mind suggested this Steve had gone to SHIELD for help with his problem.

However, the moment all Avengers were on the scene, and the two Captains mowed through the Hydra forces, channeling their anger and frustration into the fight, all miserable thoughts fled his mind. Shields flew, punches were thrown in perfect synchronicity. The Caps started the battle on opposite ends of the SHIELD base, but ended up back to back, fighting together in the heart of it. In perfect synchronicity, they punched through Hydra's forces, playing to their strength like the superior strategist they were.

“Are you getting this?” Tony asked, making sure to record this. “We have two Captain Americas.”

He had been so busy trying to solve this, trying to make Steve feel better, that the advantage of having two Caps hadn’t sunken in before now.

“Don’t gawk, Tony,” Natasha admonished. “Take out their transport.”

“Piece of cake,” he grumbled and did so, with one blast, never really taking his eyes off the fight the twinned Steves were fighting.

“What is this trickery?” the Red Skull yelled. “Rogers? Which one of you is the real one?”

Two shields took him in the chin in perfect unison.

Tony was quite proud of the close-up shot he took of it before Skull toppled over. It would make the rounds on social media tonight if he had anything to say about it.

“Which one got there first? Which Cap won? We do need to mark them,” Hawkeye suggested, of course, the one to break the silence when Tony was enjoying the epic moment, “if this is going to be a permanent thing. Otherwise, it’s going to be confusing. We should totally have a scoring system.”

“We don’t know that it’s permanent!” one of the two Captain America’s snapped into the comm system.

The other simply looked resigned.

Tony landed between them. “Steve, I was thinking: You should take that road trip with Thor. As long as Stephen Strange is lost on his own quest somewhere in the multiverse, Asgardian magic is our best bet.”

“But there’s no guarantee we'll find an answer.”

“There are no guarantees,” Tony agreed grudgingly. “When are there ever?”

A hand in a heavy red gauntlet fell on his shoulder.

“We know. _I_ know, Tony. You’re doing everything you can.”

“Mmmmn, not right now,” Sam quipped and pointed. “The Skull’s escaping.”

Watching the AIM transport fly away unhindered, left Tony behind with two Captain Americas who looked possibly even angrier than before.

“We should try. Go with Thor,” one said to the other. “Work this out.”

“True. We’re not the type to hide from a problem.”

They nodded at each other, and it looked like it was settled.

At least, Tony thought, they can agree on something.

* * *

“My mother,” Thor said, “is the wisest woman in Asgard. She was brought up by witches and wise women. Even my father turns to her for advice.”

“So, we will see her?” Both Steves looked like they didn’t even want to get out of the uniform but instead leave for Asgard right this instant. They looked out of place, even in the Avengers' kitchen that saw Avengers run in and out all the time. Tony, who was lounging at the table, watching the proceedings in his black jeans and shirt, thought that was because they were both holding their shields as if they were ready for a fight, unconsciously mirroring each other every time they tried to affirm their individuality.

“We will see her. Tomorrow we’ll leave, and if there’s some strand of fate to unravel to undo the evil that has befallen you, I’m sure she’ll be able to tell us which. She said…” Thor stopped.

“What?” Tony asked. “She said what?”

Hadn’t Thor said that nobody on Asgard had ever heard of something like this happening?

“She said from all we know the fairies of the feywild were less concerned with individuality than our kind, but one of her mothers had once told her about the Acceptance.”

“What does that mean?” Tony narrowed his eyes. Had he mentioned lately that he hated magic? Because he also hated mystical speeches that raised more questions than they answered and he should have perhaps stressed that a little more clearly when he'd had the chance.

“I do not know,” Thor admitted. “What little we know is that fairies can multiply to overwhelm their enemies, but also to secure their survival. They can’t multiply indefinitely. At some point, the mirrors will become weak, degenerate, and seek to return to their original state.”

“What does _that_ mean?” Steve asked.

“Do I understand this correctly? Fairies use the thing we saw, the bubble, to duplicate themselves — until what? One fairy becomes a hundred? A thousand? And then? That’s a cut-off? After that their multiplying weakens them? Makes the process less clean? So then they fuse again? Is that what Acceptance means?” Tony didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but if there was a way for fairies to decide to undo the multiplying then perhaps there was a way for Steve too.

“So there _is_ a way back?” Apparently, a Steve had come to the same conclusion.

“Aye,” Thor said and looked embarrassed.

Tony wanted to hit him over the head with an Iron Man gauntlet for not having said anything about this sooner. “When did she tell you this?”

“Today,” Thor said. “Before I returned.”

“Oh,” Tony said unceremoniously. “In that case, carry on.”

Thor nodded. “We’re leaving for Asgard by the morrow then.”

“For how long will we be gone?” The tension had yet to leave either of the Steves' shoulders. One had pulled back the cowl. The other hadn’t.

Nobody could blame them for wanting to have the twinning resolved as fast as possible.

“You’ll take however long it takes, Steve. We can manage. Hold down the fort while you’re gone. This is so far the best lead we’ve had from someone who knows _something_ about other dimensional fairies.”

“There’s no easy solution waiting in Asgard. I expect glorious quests and the search for answers, my friend.”

“See, you’ll have all the fun,” Tony said, trying to be encouraging, “and you have a good bet to undo this. I won’t give up either. We might finally hear back from Earth’s Mightiest Mystic.”

“So,” one Steve started, “in essence, we don’t know when we’ll be back, Thor?”

The other added: “We might be gone for a long time, in fact, yes?”

“We won’t stop searching for an answer until we found it,” Thor confirmed, and one Steve nodded, the other pulled his arms in front of his chest and thought it over.

“All right,” that one finally agreed, throwing a look at the second Steve. “We better get ready then.”

“For tomorrow, yes.”

How bad the tension between them was, only really stood out in moments when they had to agree with each other verbally. The contrast between words and body language was unmistakable. Despite being the same person, they only actually indicated agreement or their like-mindedness when they had to.

They nodded at Thor and then at Tony and walked out of the kitchen side by side in eerie solidarity that they hadn't shown once so far.

“He seems to be coming to terms,” Thor suggested, referring to Steve in the singular still.

Tony realized that in his head he too had been thinking of Steve as one person for as long as he could, but had started to think of him as two people more and more in the past weeks. Perhaps it had taken him so long because he rarely caught one without the other — even when they didn't enjoy spending their time faced with their counterparts. Around Tony, they were always together, as if there was a silent agreement not to meet him alone.

Had they hoped so badly he'd find a solution that they hadn't wanted to risk missing the moment when he told them?

Feeling he owed Steve to do better, Tony left Thor with the delights of the fridge and made his way back to his room. He still thought he needed to find a way to solve this somehow. He didn't want to send Steve off to the unknown, not even knowing when he and Thor would return.

He stopped in his tracks when he heard a loud crash from the training room.

Was Hulk taking apart the equipment again?

He took a turn left to see what was going on and froze in his tracks.

Both Steves were standing in the middle of the large arena space that they used for team workouts. It was apparent they hadn't gone back to their rooms at all. Both of them were still in full uniform, and their shields crashed and bounced off the walls as if this was much more than a training fight.

One Steve took the other by surprise, made him stumble — then that one whirled around and used his momentum to land a punch to his counterparts guts. The other Steve grunted, staggered back, found his counterpart had already thrown the shield, bouncing it off the walls at just the right angles to come at his foe from behind, used his own to deflect it, making it bounce back against the wall. And yet the other Steve quickly caught it, as if nothing had happened.

They stood there, heaving.

“We should have done this sooner.”

“Yes,” the other agreed.

Tony could do nothing more than stare. The two must know they were evenly matched. The whole fight was a constant game of strategy, trying to get at your adversary before he could get to you. A punch flew, an arm deflected, the shields made a terrible sound when they impacted full force.

They both staggered back this time, breathing heavily and staring at each other. It was rare seeing Cap so exhausted and out of breath — let alone _two_.

Tony wondered if he should say something — break this up, make sure they didn't hurt each other or destroyed the room.

“I was about to ask him out. I already _had_ asked him out.”

“ _We_ did,” the other Steve said, gritting his teeth. “That's the problem. We both remember that. We both know what we wanted to tell him. And now there's two of us, and neither wants to give. We can't both date him!”

_Date him? Ask out? What the hell are they talking about?_

And in a flash it came to Tony: Hadn't Steve asked him if he had time that day when Doom had let the fairies loose? Were they talking about him?

The other Steve nodded tensely. “We both remember because we're still the same person. We feel the same.”

His counterpart grit his teeth. “Then I can tell myself face to face that I'm an idiot. I knew what I felt, even before we broke up the Avengers. I knew what I felt when we got them back together.”

“He got them back together because of me,” the other Steve reminded his counterpart, "because I was in trouble."

“Us, to help us,” the other said between gritted teeth.

Fists rose. Both Steves took defensive stances. The frustration was about to break its way back to the surface and push them back into a fight.

“Guys?” Tony spoke up. “I'm not sure you should do that the night before the big game. There might be a long journey ahead.”

Both Caps froze, turned their heads, saw him standing there.

“You're about to leave on an adventure with Thor to undo this. I'm sorry I wasn't able to help before now. But I don't want to see the two of you get hurt because of it. And —” So far he had avoided saying it, had done his best not give up, not to let Steve resign himself to this, but it was time to face the possibility. “And there quite simply may not be a way to undo this. All we heard today is hearsay. We don't _know_. Even if there's a way, Steve, it's not worth losing you over this. Do you understand?”

Both Steves were staring at him.

“Oh, we —” one started, and the other finished, “know.”

“And if that happens, you will learn to live with it. You share the same memories up until now, but you will both make new ones if you _let yourself_. You don't _have_ to treat each other like competitors. You're both Captain America. You can make _anything_ work!”

They both slowly came out of their defensive postures but didn't take their eyes off him.

“You think so?” the one on the left asked and drew back the cowl.

“You're Captain America,” Tony stated softly. It had always meant the world to him — even when he and Steve ended up disagreeing. The fact that _Captain America_ — his greatest childhood hero — was his friend still boggled his mind. “I'm not saying we're giving up, okay? I'm just saying I don't want either of you to get hurt if we don't, okay? Can we keep it together?”

The Steve on the right gave him a long unreadable look, then drew back the cowl. For an eerie long and silent moment, both Steves shared a look.

“We're both Steve,” he pointed out. “We both feel the same.”

“Yeah, about that,” Tony said, suddenly flustered, because he was not sure he should have heard any part of that conversation — and even less sure he had jumped to the right conclusions. Had Tony Stark — attractive billionaire and superhero — completely missed when _Captain America_ tried to ask him out?

“You heard,” the Steve on the left concluded and considered that.

“And he just _told_ us that he cares what becomes of both of us,” the other Steve pointed out.

“He did,” the other agreed.

There was that shared look again.

Tony knew the look. It was the look Steve got whenever he was _planning_

“I do care for you, Steve. I do. I was happy to spend time with you. I didn’t get it was a date then…”

“I noticed,” both said at the same time and then smiled at him as if that was amusing.

“I didn’t think you see me like that. When we broke up the Avengers… We didn’t see each other. We didn’t call or talk...”

One of the Steves said: “I know. I missed you.”

“I missed you too.” He met that Steve’s eyes and there was an awkward moment, with the other Steve shifting his weight nervously from one leg to the other.

“And now there’s two of us,” Steve reminded them. “And we both missed you and had hoped to…”

“That's okay,” Tony suggested with a weak smile, “we can talk this through when you're both back from space kingdoms and this is hopefully solved. But I'll miss you.”

“What if it isn't solved? What is this can't be solved?” the other Steve asked, trying to keep his hands still.

Tony knew Steve well enough to see that both of them were still highly uncomfortable. Some teasing was in order.

“I don't know what you were trying to do here, Caps, but it looked like you were blowing off steam. Were you fighting over me?” He winked.

“In a way,” one Steve admitted immediately, and Tony blinked at them, honestly surprised.

“You were..? Really?” Heat rose in his cheeks. God, if that wasn't the _hottest_ thing he'd ever heard. Not just one Cap had admitted to wanting him, now there were _two_. And both of them _wanted_ Tony to the point where they were _fighting_

So inappropriate and hot.

His face flushed. He knew it.

There was a shift in both Steves as they gave each other a considering glance.

Of course, they had noticed.

Tony's face was so hot; there was no way they hadn't noticed.

“What if there's no solution?” one of the Steve's asked and Tony didn't catch which one. "The winner gets Tony? We can't do that."

"It's his choice," the other Steve said.

He knew they were addressing each other and not him, but he still answered: “Can never be too much of a good thing, right?”

It was good that his cheeks were still hot because he would have flushed crimson at the sudden heat in both their gazes. Would he have ever dared to imagine that Steve would look at him like this? With unguarded need? He had known there was attraction and he had always felt the pull, the conviction that they'd be good together, but had he ever truly believed Cap would return the feeling? And now two Steves were showing him openly — and on the double.

He stood frozen in his tracks.

Both Steves looked at each other. “You think so?” one asked of Tony.

He tried to shrug, nod, play it off.

“Because Steve is thinking exactly what I'm thinking,” the other Steve drawled.

Tony's eyes went wide. He had no idea what that meant, but suddenly his head was filled with the possibilities of that sentence.

“Cooperation is something we're good at. Why is it so hard to cooperate with yourself?”

“Maybe it isn't?”

When both Steves turned their attention back on him Tony flushed — by now he must be a flustered crimson that rivaled the red of the armor. He tried to keep it together. Shiny red was the Iron Man look and flustered crimson _not_ the Tony Stark look.

Why then did he feel like a deer in the headlights?

There was no danger around, just Steve gauging him from two faces, considering his options.

Then the two Steves moved as one. Tony had seen them move like it in battle and even a moment before when they’d been fighting: Their movements perfect mirrors, their strategy evident to the other without any need for discussion.

Tony gasped. Lips left a trail along his throat. Breath ghosted along his cheek. The heavy red leather of Steve’s gauntlet settled at his chin and pulled him up. Then Steve — a Steve — was kissing him.

Hard.

As if he was making a point.

When teeth nipped the side of his throat, kissing a line up to that sensitive spot under his ear, he whined into the kiss, giving Steve even more of a hold on him. And the Steve who was kissing Tony didn’t waste time. He deepened the kiss.

Had Tony expected that Steve would be this passionate, this demanding? Had he expected him to be gentle? Had he expected to ever be kissed by him? Really? For all the fantasies that he’d indulged in had he honestly thought this could happen?

The rough edge of gauntleted fingers touched Tony's skin at the edge between shirt and pants. One hand had grasped Tony's wrist to hold him in place, and another was pushing its way under his shirt.

It was too much, too fast — and yet he wanted _more_.

He let his tongue slide against Steve’s, reveling in the wet heat, inciting Steve’s renewed enthusiasm. Teeth nibbled on his earlobe, and Tony was shocked when he realized that the sudden keening sound, half, swallowed by Steve’s kisses was coming from him.

Steve pulled away to let him take a breath. Tony gasped.

“I knew you'd be good at kissing,” Steve whispered, leaned in to push their foreheads together.

 _That_ shouldn't have felt even more intimate than the kissing.

“We knew,” the other Steve whispered and sent a shiver down Tony's spine, “that you'd be perfect.”

 _His_ hands were busy stroking along Tony's stomach, pushing up the black shirt he was wearing, further and further up until the thick fabric of the gauntlets brushed against a nipple, and Tony gasped again, louder.

“Still not too much of a good thing?” the Steve in front of him asked with all the earnestness Tony expected of Captain America, but with Steve's lips still wet from the _indecent_ kiss they'd just shared the effect on Tony was amazing. Lust pulsed through him as if they were still caught in that kiss — and he was still locked in a Steve's arms, who had stilled only momentarily to give them this exchange.

“Not _enough_ ,” Tony breathed. “You have no idea how much of a turn on it is to have you want me. And now there's two of you and... Not enough, Steve. Don't stop.”

Steve looked over his shoulder. They were looking at each other, Tony knew, without seeing the twin Steve behind him. He could feel Steve's breath ghosting against his ear, the possessive way his hand rested against Tony's stomach. Then both Steves came to another silent agreement.

Tony felt himself pulled — pushed? — back until he found himself sitting in the lap of the Steve who was holding him tight. The other Steve followed, sank to his knees, pulling on Tony's legs, maneuvering himself until he was leaning over him, one of Tony's legs held in a tight grip at a knee.

It gave Tony enough of an angle to lean his head against the shoulder of the Steve supporting him and look at his face.

“Here? Really?”

“We're not walking you back to your quarters.”

The other Steve huffed, and he was now helping his twin getting Tony out of his shirt, pushing it up, helping him raise Tony's arms so they could slide it over his head. It landed beside them in a heap. “None of us is walking anywhere right now,” he said and pointedly stroked his hand down Tony's stomach and toward the apparent bulge that had formed in his pants between kissing and being touched.

“JARVIS,” Tony shouted. “Lock down the training room until further notice. No interruptions if it isn't at least risk assessment Level 6.”

“Yes, sir,” the AI answered; the automatic locks huffed and then slid into place with a loud click.

"Where were we?" he asked breathlessly.

Both Steves looked at him heatedly. He felt like a morsel on a plate, being held between these two men who were _both_ the man he'd been silently in love with for years.

“Are we going too fast?” the Steve in whose lap he was asked, whispering the words past Tony's ear.

Before Tony could say something, the other Steve replied: “No, we've been dancing around each other for years. I don't think we need to slow down now.”

He looked at Tony, waiting for confirmation.

“Steve, I never dared to think...”

“You're right. We wasted time,” Steve answered and then kissed him, as hard and demanding as before.

“We'll date you properly later,” the other Steve affirmed, and then he grabbed Tony's chin, pulled him out of the kiss, made him bend his face up so he could take the other Steve's place, kissing him deeply. The power of it was overwhelming. They kissed the same, tasted the same, knew exactly how to hold him motionless without hurting him. He'd never felt so helpless, so _dominated_ and yet so safe.

Because Steve would never hurt him.

He could hear something fall to the floor; then fingers busied themselves with opening Tony's pants. The Steve not kissing him had freed his hands from the heavy gauntlets to touch. He shivered under the fingers, whimpered into the new round of heated kisses and then latched onto the heat, trying to drink it up like honey.

His pants went into a heap on the floor alongside his shirt.

The kiss broke when Tony tried to shift, but Steve held him in place, let him squirm in his lap while his twin let his fingers slide along Tony's erection for the first time.

“Why am I naked,” he panted, unable to stop squirming, rolling his hips in an attempt to get Steve to stroke him harder. The first hints of bliss were pooling in his stomach, building up to the frenzy and need that promised delicious pleasure. “Both of you are dressed.”

“Shh,” one Steve ordered, and Tony didn't know which one. When had he closed his eyes?

The fingers stroking him formed a fist and pulled harder.

Tony's head rolled back, and he cried out: “God, please, Steve.”

A second hand joined the first. They were both touching him, stroking him. He was defenseless in their arms, bucking up into the gentle hands, and arching his back, feeling the unmistakable hardness poking up through the Captain America uniform. The Steve behind him _sighed_ when Tony deliberately rolled his hips again and made sure to grind himself down just right.

“Please, Steve, please,” he whispered, and he had the impossibly delicious thought of them kissing but didn't dare say it. His cock jumped happily at the idea.

There was more silent conferring between the Steves, Tony knew without looking.

Then one Steve pulled him towards himself by the knees, and the other made Tony's head rest in his lap, freeing his own erection.

No demands were uttered, as their lovemaking set into a natural flow as if this had always been going on between the three of them. Tony licked his lips, studying the cock in front of his face, before leaning more to the side to lick it. Steve groaned, but Tony had no real time to consider it — moaning himself, when the tip of one finger slicked up with something slippery breached him.

“Steve,” he whispered, “Steve, Steve, Steve.”

It all devolved into slick heat, and overwhelming ecstasy, sensory overload from there as one Steve prepared him, and he took the other Steve's cock into his mouth. Tony moaned and writhed, and finally, they were all joined, on Steve groaning under his mouth, another moaning as Tony's tight heat gripped him, Tony's knees leaning on his shoulders. Even the sounds they made, moving together like one body, melted together into a symphony of perfection.

He had no idea how long it went on, too lost in the sensation, the taste, and smell of Steve.

The cock slipped from his mouth, wet and silky. Then hands gripped him, and he was pulled over the mats as if he weighed nothing.

He blinked up, realized they'd changed position — not sure even how he knew which Steve was which, just that he was now on his knees, the wet tip of a cock already pushing into him and a disheveled Steve was gripping his chin with bare fingers coaxing his mouth open with a thumb.

The heated look the Steve in front Tony gave him went right to Tony's cock.

 _I'm dead, and this is my personal paradise,_ Tony thought and then moaned around the thick flesh as both Caps set a relentless pace with him, stroking, gripping, pushing, pulling. Tony cried and moaned, sounds choked — and felt the orgasm building even before fingers sheathed in heavy leather settled around him to stroke.

The fell in a heap on the mat after, Tony resting between the two still half-clad super soldiers.

“That was perfect,” he murmured, while one Steve stoked a finger against his still swollen and tingling lips and the other kissed a trail along his shoulders. Fingers kneaded his scalp, helping him to come down from the high and settle down.

“Rest, Tony,” one Steve whispered.

“We're not done with you yet,” the other promised.

That was good. Who knew how long Steve — they — would be gone. Tony would get all he could before he'd let them go.

Both Steves decided though that this wasn’t the place to let Tony fall asleep. They helped him back into his shirt and pants and together they stole down the corridor like thieves, counting on JARVIS to not let them be caught. Tony knew that Natasha would only need to look at him to understand what had gone on between him and the two Steves. Not that it wouldn’t be more than obvious. He hadn’t even properly tugged himself back together before they’d started their track down the corridors and he was _walking_ with that treacherous hint of what he’d just been up to. He reeked of sex.

If he was being honest, two Steves with messed up, less than perfectly brushed hair, but eyes shining with satisfaction and love were a dead giveaway too.

Tony had an idea what Hawkeye would have to say about all of this — and he didn't want to hear it.

One Steve took him by the hand. The other pushed him forward with a hand on the small of his back. A short look to at the Steve was enough to confirm that they wouldn’t make it up to Tony’s room and spacious bed. Steve’s room was much closer.

“Awake?” Steve asked, pressing a kiss to Tony's, and the other Steve chuckled.

“Awake and ready to go,” Tony answered and pushed the door to Steve’s apartment open. “If I had known that the only thing it took to make you get along with yourself was to bend over…”

A Steve was there to kiss him before he could finish that sentence, another to push him into the room the two of them had unhappily shared for the past weeks.

Tony would have grinned and laughed if his mind weren’t already clouding over with the new spark of fire when the two of them pushed him over to the bedroom without ever taking their hands off him. How long until one super soldier’s stamina ran out? How long with two?

With the anticipation building, he let himself fall onto the bed, helped this time to get rid of his shirt.

“You too this time,” he demanded. “Both of you. It's only fair.”

The Steves eyed each other, both already half on the bed in their uniforms, not even the boots shed yet.

For the first time since they’d formed their lustful agreement, unease shone in their eyes — then the first Steve sat neatly down at the side of the bed to take his boots off, and the other started to shuck out of the top of the uniform, revealing a clean white muscle shirt beneath.

Tony skidded back on the bed so he could watch both of them at the same time. When they were both done, he beamed, an idea forming that had perhaps been there since the moment this had started. He let himself off the bed, made them sit close together and kneeled in front of them.

He smiled up, letting his hands glide along their thighs to reach the already hardening cocks he found there.

Never too much of a good thing indeed, he thought, as he got to work, pleasing both of them, not wanting either of them to feel neglected.

* * *

Later he fell asleep, sweaty, satisfied and aching in places that he wasn’t sure had ever ached quite like this before. He was warm; he felt loved and secure. One Steve was stroking his hand along the small of his back, the other his hip.

“What happens if there’s no way back from this?”

“We learn to share? We’re the same person. We made it work for this. For him.”

Too tired to listen, he let his eyes fall shut and drifted off.

* * *

He woke up to a terrible noise.

The bed was still warm, but he knew straightaway that something was missing.

Steve.

Both of them.

He was wrapped in the blankets, but both men were gone.

“Steve?” he called.

The noise was coming from the bathroom.

It sounded like someone falling.

“Steve!”

Were they fighting again? Weren’t they beyond that?

He jumped out of bed, nearly tripped over his own feet when he realized that he was in no state to run with all the _exercise_ he’d enjoyed. As quick as he could, he stumbled over to the bathroom.

The door was ajar. He pulled it open.

There he found Steve sitting on the floor, his legs drawn up. Steve was wearing blue track pants. His face was hidden in his hands. In the dim light of the room, he looked ghostly pale.

“Steve?” Tony tried. “You’re alone? Where is —?”

Steve raised his head. “The other Steve, you mean? Hi. It's both of me.”

Steve's brow was sweatier than it was after a long run, sweatier than it had been after the fight a few hours ago.

“Hi,” Tony echoed and let his eyes sweep over the bathroom. “He’s gone?”

Wasn’t it just terrible that he hadn’t even found a way to tell them apart? How did he know which Steve this was and which one had vanished?

Steve shook his head. “He’s right here. It’s me. We’re both me. Again.”

“Oh,” Tony said, trying to digest that and come to a conclusion what that meant. He inched closer and sat down beside Steve, back leaning against the bathtub, offering his support if it was wanted. “You all right? What happened?”

Without hesitation, Steve grabbed his hand and laced their fingers together. “Acceptance,” he said. “Acceptance happened.”

They sat together in silence until Tony could no longer stand it. “No, really? What happened? I heard a frightening noise. I thought the two of you were fighting again…”

“We watched you sleep,” Steve interrupted. “Talked about how if there was no solution for our twinning we would try and make it work. Together. The three of us. He wasn’t a threat anymore. I wasn’t a threat anymore. It’s… complicated. Our fingers touched — and we melted together.”

“Melted?”

“It hurt,” Steve elaborated. “We made it in here and… I’m not sure I can explain it. I’m one again.”

“Are you all right? Honestly?”

“Yeah,” Steve said and nodded. He was still squeezing Tony’s hand. “I’m with you, and I’m whole again.”

“Was that it?” Tony asked. “We had sex, and you accept that you split — and that’s it? Acceptance?”

Expression turning pained, Steve declared: “Tony, I think, I hate magic.”

“Okay, good. I prefer science myself. As we all already know.”

They sat together for a few minutes — not talking.

Tony still had many questions. He wanted to get Steve down to the workshop or lab and make sure he was all right, make sure he was Steve. But Steve’s thumb was stroking along Tony's palm, distracting him, and in the end, Tony simply squeezed back reassuringly. Obviously, after the last couple of days they'd had, Steve needed time to process.

“What now?” It wasn’t like Steve to ask. He always had a clear plan for what to do next.

“We go back to bed? We make sure you rest and in the morning tell Thor you won’t be needing an Asgardian consultation. We should probably make sure you’re okay, that there are no unforeseen or lasting effects.”

“Fine with less of a good thing now?”

A weak smile greeted Tony when he peeked over at Steve. He leaned in to kiss it away — the exhaustion lines, the insecurity. None of that belonged on Steve's face.

“You’re exactly the right amount of a good thing for me — if you come as one or by a dozen. We’ll always have the memory of this though and it made us richer for the experience. I won't forget about it any time soon.”

Steve chortled under his breath. While there still was an edge of tiredness to it, the sound held heartfelt mirth. “Funny thing that. I remember everything. All of it. Being both people… I won't forget about that either.” He let his fingers trail up Tony’s arm and along his throat, his cheekbone. “I remember leaving all these marks, with all four hands involved.”

Heat rose into Tony's cheeks again.

“I remember all the pleasure, all the sounds I drew from you — and it was all me.”

“Steeeeve,” Tony whispered and caught the hand that was stroking along his cheek now, “I’m just a man. You make me go weak in the knees — and I’m not even standing up, okay?”

Steve chuckled. “Good.”

He was the one getting to his feet, and he held down a hand to help Tony up, hugging him close as soon as they were standing chest to chest.

“You told me, you’d find a solution. Thank you.”

“I had sex with two of you,” Tony pointed out, “and no idea that would help. If I had known, I would have jumped you right away.”

“I started it,” Steve reminded him. “Both of me. I know what I want. I _love you._ ”

“Clearly,” Tony agreed and wrapped his arms around Steve. “And I love you. We just had trouble communicating it in a way that both of us got, huh?”

Softly Steve pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Let’s go to bed. Tomorrow I’ll take you out. You and me, finally. No complications. A real date.”

“Sounds perfect,” Tony agreed, although he didn’t trust they’d be able to go a single day without complications — even if the complications turned out to be their nosy teammates and nothing worse. No need to tell Steve that _now_.

They walked back to bed together, holding hands and slipped under the covers, wrapping each other up.

Exhausted, Steve was the first to fall asleep this time. Tony watched him sleep, wondering about all that had happened. It had gotten them here. Into each other’s arms — with some sexy memories, Tony was unlikely to forget.

Perhaps sometimes magic wasn’t all bad.

What would Doom think if he knew that this was what his distraction had caused in the end?

Snuggling closer to his lover’s warmth, he let himself doze off too.

He was sure he’d need his strength tomorrow —

— and hopefully every day after.


End file.
